This Is Why Android Can’t Have Nice Things

This Is Why Android Can’t Have Nice Things


Dead Trigger, a mobile video game for iOS and Android, is now free on the Google Play Store. Awesome, right? Except no. It’s not awesome, since it’s only free because the piracy rate for the Android version is “unbelievably high. Ugh.

It’s just one example, but it’s a problem that’s endemic to the platform — or at least seen that way. There are a lot of things keeping developers from succeeding on, or even wading into the Android platform. Fragmentation doesn’t help. But developers having to just give up charging for their game — which was only a buck! — because everyone’s pirating it has to have a lot to do with it.

And look, we’ve given you plenty of advice about how to pirate. But in general, you want to limit those habits to things you actually own, and are being inconvenienced out of, by DRM or format or whatnot. Not every app on your mobile platform.

Until the problem corrects itself, iOS is going to continue to obliterate Android in app profits. And as long as that keeps up, Android’s going to keep getting second-rate effort from good developers, and inferior versions of good apps. [Verge]


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